Everyday Beans Podcast - Mostly About Coffee and Other Stuff

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Grinder, check. Brewer, check. Water? For years, that was the one box I never actually checked. In this episode I walk through my whole water journey in coffee, tap water, then refrigerated water, then mineral packets, then dropping them when I stopped noticing a difference, then coming back years later with a TDS meter and a better palate. I talk about the moment my cup turned metallic and heavy, what the PPM readings told me, and why diluting a packet past the box directions was my first real fix.
The rest of this episode is about the last five percent. I break down the acidic water profile and the sweet water profile I built, why the sweet one dulled my coffee, why the acidic one eventually took over the cup, and how a fifty fifty split finally let the coffee sound like itself. You will learn the simple spring water taste test that gets you most of the way there, why water deserves a fraction of the attention we give grinders and brewers, and how to sequence water, grinder, and brewer so each one gets solved and then goes quiet. The goal is not to master water. It is to finish water so you can go back to the coffee.
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I get honest in this one about a mistake I made with my own gear, and what it taught me about testing everything in coffee instead of just trusting what I'm told. I walk through the moment I found a hidden calibration setting on my kettle that fixed a temperature swing I had been blaming the kettle for, and why being "right" about what I observed wasn't the same as being right about the cause.
From there I get into why every claim about a brewer, whether it's a Hario V60 or a flatbed brewer like the April Brewer, needs to be tested against your own palate instead of taken at face value. I talk through my own head to head testing between conical and flatbed brewers, what I found when I started comparing brewer geometry side by side, and where the line sits between useful testing and paralyzing yourself with over analysis. If you want a real, first person framework for building trust in your own coffee palate instead of borrowing someone else's, this episode will give you one.
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Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com

For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans

For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com

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Your coffee is telling you something, and most of the time it's only asking about a couple of things. Let's be real: we don't change that much. Temperature, grind size, maybe the brewer if you've got a few. I saw a post on Reddit from someone who loved a coffee at a café and couldn't get it back at home, so I ran my own version with a Kenyan. Day one at 200°F on a V60 was sharp, with a lingering grapefruit taste I don't like. A coarser grind made it juicier. A lower temperature with the grind in between made it jammier and better, and moving it to the Kalita Wave made it better still.
I also tell the story of a dark roast where a 45 second to a minute bloom reminded me of a trick I'd known and forgotten, and I walk through the short list I actually work with: brewer, water, filter, temperature, grind. Past that, the bloom timings, the swirls, the Melodrip and the boosters start to cloud it. So what are you tasting, and do you like it? What's your coffee telling you to change?
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For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans

For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com

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I ran out of medium roast, and for two straight weeks I only had dark roast to drink. I've always said medium and dark are my favorite roasts to actually sit down and enjoy, so I figured this would be easy. It wasn't. By the end of week two, every dark roast I owned, a Kenyan, a Nicaraguan, and my own Outcast blend, started tasting exactly the same: sweet, low acidity, no matter what brewer, grinder, or water profile I threw at it. In this episode, I talk through what it actually feels like to get palate-fatigued on a coffee you genuinely love, and why that fatigue isn't a flaw in the coffee. It's just what happens when you spend enough time with anything.
I also tell the story of the Costa Rican black honey that first taught me how to actually taste sweetness, chocolate, fruit, layered, distinct sweetness, not just "coffee is sweet" as a throwaway description. You'll learn why I used to hate small bag sizes and changed my mind, why hitting a "breaking point" with a coffee is actually the moment worth chasing rather than avoiding, and a few concrete things to try (grind size, filter speed, water profile) the next time a coffee starts feeling flat to you. If you've ever gotten bored of a coffee you swore you loved, this one's for you.
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Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com

For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans

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Every batch starts the same. Beans, heat, time. I don't start the same, and the beans were never really the same either. This episode is about the part of coffee we almost never talk about, which is the person doing the roasting. I roast, so I can say this from the inside: a roaster is a human being first, with bills and illnesses and a family, wondering whether this thing is even a real profession, and geeking out over beans anyway. I walk you through what actually happens to a bag before it reaches you. The green sitting in a warehouse for months, losing time. The importer's notes and scores. The protocol and the profile and the charts. And then the ordinary human weather on top of it, which is that some days the machine is dirty, some days there is more chaff than there should be, and some days the person's attitude is shot.
I tell you the thing roasters mostly do not say out loud, which is that I have gone too fast on a roast and sold that coffee to people anyway, and I am not unique in that. Then I get into the money, because the money explains a lot of the behaviour. What brisket did to barbecue is happening to coffee right now. Green that was a dollar eighty a pound is close to five. A twenty five dollar bag is not the profit you think it is. And I close on the coffee that taught me all of this, a Colombian from a Seattle roaster that was magic the first time and muted the second, and how long it took me to stop deciding he had failed me. What I want out of this one is small and it is not a pass. Keep your honesty about what is in your cup. Just leave a little room for the person who put it there.
Support the show
Go deeper than the episode, in the newsletter: https://itsmellsbetterthanittaste.com

For tips, tricks and still trying to figure it out: https://www.youtube.com/@everyday-beans

For good tasty coffee, check us out at: everydaybeans.com